General Motors has formed a strategic partnership with up-and-coming electric truck manufacturer Nikola.
The automaker says Nikola will utilize its Ultium battery system and Hydrotec fuel cell technology in its future products, which will include the Badger electric pickup truck, NZT side-by-side and the One, Two and Tre semi-trucks.
Additionally, GM will engineer, validate, homologate and build the Nikola Badger pickup truck, while Nikola will be responsible for the sales and marketing of the vehicle and will retain the Nikola Badger brand. The Badger will be offered with both battery-electric and hydrogen-electric powertrains, so it will utilize both Ultium and Hydrotec technology.
Nikola, for its part, will exchange “$2 billion in newly issued common stock for the in-kind services and access to GM’s global safety-tested and validated parts and components,” the automaker said. The deal will help Nikola save over $4 billion in battery and powertrain costs over 10 years and over $1 billion in engineering and validation costs. GM is expecting to receive $4 billion in benefits from the deal thanks to the equity value of the shares, contract manufacturing of the Badger, supply contracts for batteries and fuel cells as well as any EV credits retained over the duration of the contract.
“This strategic partnership with Nikola, an industry leading disrupter, continues the broader deployment of General Motors’ all-new Ultium battery and Hydrotec fuel cell systems,” GM CEO Mary Barra said in a prepared statement. “We are growing our presence in multiple high-volume EV segments while building scale to lower battery and fuel cell costs and increase profitability. In addition, applying General Motors’ electrified technology solutions to the heavy-duty class of commercial vehicles is another important step in fulfilling our vision of a zero-emissions future.”
The Badger pickup truck is slated to make its official public debut sometime during the first week of December in Arizona. Production is expected to start in late 2022, though the location will be announced at a later date. Interestingly, the electric pickup will compete directly with GM’s new GMC Hummer EV truck and the yet-to-be-named electric Chevrolet pickup, though the commercialization of the Ultium batteries is far more important than the competitive standing of these future products. Additionally, with Nikola paying GM in issued common stock, the automaker has a vested interest to see the startup succeed.
The announcement of this partnership comes less than a week after GM announced it had entered a strategic alliance with Honda to share its Ultium batteries with the Japanese automaker, along with its BEV3 global electric vehicle platform and connected technology such as OnStar and V2X, among more. Partnerships like these will be more common in the automotive industry going forward due to the immense costs associated with developing and producing electric and semi or fully autonomous vehicles.
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Comments
So does this mean the end of GMC as we know it?
Niqola
Why do you write “Niqola”, with Q?
Nikola (or Nikolaus) Tesla was born in what is today Croatia, near the border with Bosnia-Hercegovina, where the Austro-Hungarian monarchy placed fugitve Serbs as a bulwark against the Otoman ruled Bonsa-Herczek. i.e. he was of Serbian descent but not born in Serbia.
This is the future. Yes GM will still mfg vehicles but they plan to be a tech company developing components and systems for others. They will sell, license and partner to make money off the internals of they develop.
The a Honda deal was just the start. This is the second deal. GM has been seen working on the Ford Mach E too.
Think of Intel they are not a computer mfg but they are in near every computer made. This is a similar idea. GM can not only save money but make money on these deal.
I can see deal too where GM will engineer the vehicle and a Honda will mfg. the first Honda deal has GM supplying the batteries and drivetrains while Honda will style the body and interior.
The industry was in for a big change and now the virus has sped up the changes in how the industry works and does business. We will see more deals soon. .
This will make GM as powerful as Tesla, even while using the first name of the great engineer himself.
Is that sarcasm or were you serious?
I see that down vote. So he was serious then? I actually wanted to know.
I truly feel like Nikola is a Ponzi Scheme.
I think GM is only doing this for the Shares that they will cash out. Hope I am wrong
I was over at the Electrek article on this a bit ago to get some good laughs…the readers/commenters there all basically just Tesla fanbois and tech people, and know about as much about cars and finance as Roseanne Barr knows about nuclear power plants. Anyways.
What those commenters all missed, and some here may be missing too, is that this deal can’t be spun as anything other than a great move by GM. Think about what GM gets:
– 11% of Nikola shares, which are already shooting up (and GM will likely cash out at some point if Nikola starts to fail)
– contract manufacturing of the Badger, which will be lucrative
– supply contracts for batteries and fuel cells, which will be VERY lucrative
– EV credits retained over the duration of the contract
– cost spreading among not only their own EV’s, but Nikola’s truck as well, increasing profitability while shrinking costs
And if things go south, GM has to give none of this money from Nikola back. They simply divest and move on. This is another great extremely low risk, potentially very substantial reward move by GM, and it makes great business sense for them. Very commendable.
Nikola, on the other hand…they’ve got a lot of explaining to do to their fan base.
@G8Burnout
I couldn’t have said it better myself. I just do not trust that CEO at all.
Great overall move by GM.
My biggest question is now the following…how will the market react?
Meaning Nikola just gave up 11% of their Shares to GM just to build their so called vehicles that none of us have ever seen in real life. The Badger is basically a CGI Drawing. We shall see.
They need to go back to the drawing board this look like a FORD with a DODGE grill
That Dodge grill is taken from the front end of a 1956-1957 GMC pickup
I’m not a big fan of this, the ceo of the company sends out complete imposter vibes, he looks like a crook car salesman rather than a revolutionary genius businessman. i’m afraid he’s gonna swindle the market and the GM and fly to the Caymans with the money.
I rather GM revisit the collaboration with Rivian, because Ford abandoned their intended one due to having financial difficulties. Rivian looks like a real company with real products and production facilities and backed by Amazon.
I would also rather work with Rivian but Ford and Rivian are still working together. The only statement released was that Rivian pushed the project back because of the pandemic. No official statement was ever released that they were no longer working together. I read an article not to long ago about Lincoln and Rivian are currently working on a platform together.
Rivian didn’t make as much sense for GM because Rivian had their platform and battery design and GM had their own platform and battery design. Ford needed Rivian. GM doesn’t need Nikola. The Nikola Badger will basically be a Hummer with a different skin and interior, but all the important bits, EV drivetrain, battery and electronics being shared.
GM needs Nikola to handle the hydrogen aspect of the business – especially building out the refueling infrastructure. Also the heavy duty trucking part. Nikola is building a new factory in Arizona to assemble their semi and garbage trucks.
And what about “Lordstown Motors” and their “Endurance” pickup?
This company went public with GM financial support, I understand from an earlier post.
BTW, nice to read of the “Hydrotec” fuel cell being used in a motor vehicle
I believe that this is definitely going to be the way of GM’s rise to the top of the automobile mountain again. Like it or not, battery power is the new gasoline. I’m a classic car fan and I wonder what the future holds in store for fuel to power them.
GM will never rise to the top of the mountain again with current miss management ruining the company… Gloming on to the efforts of others shows how lost and out of touch GM miss management is… GM leads the auto industry no more. hitching a ride on others innovations and showing up years late to the current moves of the industry shows how cautious, cheap, vision less and behind GM is. GM miss management craven goal now is how to most cost effectively offshore all of this…
You do understand Nikola as well as Honda are using GM innovations for their EVs?
I’m definitely with Timothy and theflew on this one. Electric vehicles is really the first true, across-the-board clean slate GM has ever had in it’s entire history from a product and image standpoint, even more so than the bankruptcy. We all know the many shortcomings of GM over the decades. Those have been almost entirely exclusive to their ICE operations. But if they can keep snatching up market share by making deals with competitors to supply platforms, and they actually make quality EVs…they could absolutely return to the top.
It’s crazy, but not nearly as farfetched as it seems.
What is the purpose of a fuel cell in a pickup truck? Is it to add ballast like in a sailboat?
The opposite, it is to get rid of ballast, the ballast of a huge battery.
Even Li-Ion batteries have a much lower density of energy than liquid hydrocarbon fuel, and also of Hydrogen.
A battery can increase the weight of a car by 50%, and its price by 100%.
The fuel cell is not so heavy. And some kg of H2 can be loaded in a few minutes, just as you take hydrocarbon fuel today.
As soon as GM miss management gets a hold of this they will wreck it. Cheapest possible product at the absolute highest price..
Fuel cells for commercial grade vehicles including 18 wheelers is the only way to go aside from diesel. Batteries weigh to much to haul for long periods. This technology has also potential applications to cargo ships and airplanes where batteries will never work on scale. Let’s see where it goes.
@Jake
I respectfully disagree with that. Sorry
I will side with the Person that started an Auto Company based off Battery Tech and turned that Company into one of the Top Ten Companies world Wide. He said EV’s were the Future and everyone laughed at him. Look what is taking place around the World with EV’s now.
I am also siding with the Guy who owns a Rocket Company that figured out how to land and reuse Rockets. He hasn’t been wrong yet so I side with Elon on the Hydrogen front as well.
Hydrogen makes no sense. Just think of the Infrastructure they would need to have built out to make it work. That will take decades. You can place Charging Ports pretty much everywhere. It is a No Brainer.
Warehouses can have Charging Ports at each Dock to Charge up the Semi as it is Loading and Unloading. Hydrogen will not be able to compete with that kind of ease.
Just my Humble opinion concerning Hydrogen.
You would need a super-huge and super-heavy battery to power a real truck unless you have the time to recharge twice a day. And reserve some hours for recharging.
Just today I read about the new e-Vito, i.e. the middle sized transporter van by Mercedes. A fast recharge takes 30 minutes, and you get only 80% of the battery’s actual capacity, and a large part of the electrical energy is dissipated as heat. On a regular household wall outlet it takes 7½ hours. The vehicle has to stand while recharging. For hours.
How long do you think a recharge of a full truck of several (metric) tons? A day? Two?
How much space will be left for cargo after the battery?
Nono, especially for heavier vehicles, fuel cell is the only solution. The electric current is being produced while driving, and refueling is done in a few minutes.
H2 fuelleing stations can be added to todays gas stations for hydrocarbon fuels.
You have to wait like 15 Minutes after every use at an H2 Station as the Nozzle gets too cold.
Why would any Station spend all that insane amount of money to convert to a Hydrogen Station when they can just add easy to install Charging Stations. Makes no sense.
As far as charging the EV Semi, we will see shortly when Tesla releases their battery info on the 22nd
Why should the nozzle get cold, or even too cold?
I think this worry about the nozzle freezing is due to the wrong idea that H2 is kept in deep freeze of minus 150°C or so.
Actually it is being compressed at 700 bar (for passenger cars) or 350 bar (mainly for trucks and buses).
In Germany, the government has a plan to get 100 H2-stations in the important agglomerations and the highways (Autobahn) interconnecting those, open by the end of 2020; at the time of this writing there are 85 in operation, 5 In planning, 6 in Approval Phase, 2 in Execution Phase, 9 in Trial operation phase. See h2.live/en/netzausbau See main page for a map, which also shows H2 fuelling stations in neighboring countries.
Well maybe one day the Tech will get better but by that time it will probably take you 5 Minutes to Completely charge your Battery Electric vehicle. Hydrogen will not overtake the Shift to EV’s anytime soon no matter how badly Big Oil wants that to be the case.
The best feature is that General Motors will be able to test their next generation EV technology which means that when it’s time to bring the Cadillac Lyriq to production, the Lyriq will be bulletproof as General Motors will learn from any potential mistake with the production of the Nikola electric truck.
Omegatalon (and his 3 upvoters) stikes again!!
Production of the Badger begins at about the same time as the Lyriq. Late 2022.
Hardly time to “test their gear” is it? Being an EV built by GM, it will come from the same factory as the Lyriq.
Also forgetting that the Lyriq is actually coming out in 2021 in China first.
I understand that these ” deals ” sound good to some, and bad to others.
That is ok !
We shall see !
So far, just as all other GM promises, they are just that, promises !
I would love it if all of this becomes reality.
I see this as GM trying once again to boost their stock price, yet still today not even post bankruptcy levels !
I also see this as a GM coming to Jesus reality, as there is no way GM can do it alone !
GM really wanted to, try, and try, yet just could not get it done. Sure maybe Honda and Nikola and others will join, I see it as they really have no choice !
Tesla is just crushing it.
Also what do you guys make of Elon meeting with VW ? Man if there was anything to that meeting, look out !
I realize the world of transportation is changing, I also believe in reality.
Look, Tesla is already doing it, they have two of three giga factories already done throughout the world !
GM has NOTHING at this point, just more talking, and waiting !! and they need more money and just cant seem to gain any traction in stock interest.
I find it interesting that GM still needs to even build a factory, partnering with LG to do any of what they promise, and that is ONE factory !
Yet I will never underestimate China, as China really owns the majority of GM, China might be able to make this happen, and once again we in the US will be driving a GM assembled China built vehicle !
Tesla only has one giga factory that produces batteries and that plant is owned by Panasonic. Panasonic leases the space from Tesla.
GM on the other hand has plants around the world so like Detroit-Hamtramck or Orion plants it is just a matter of converting them as needed for EV only production.
And unlike Tesla’s and Panasonic’s relationship. GM and LG Chem have a 50-50 partnership.
I stated on another post, Old USA companies need to reinvent themselves and signing up new alliances is a good step. IBM was the first to market a PC, was the largest ever electric type writer manufacture, manufactured main frame computers and a Hugh software development. What did they do starting in the late 1980’s, dropped all manufacturing and stuck to software and made more profits. Now it does look more and more that this is what GM is doing, a good step to have their products in all future vehicles by most manufactures. And what are most manufactures doing with their infotainment systems? Going with CarPlay and save millions in software development. Why not go on the market and buy a battery system. Makes sense, car manufactures never made tires!
Like I said, I hope it works out for GM.
But listen to what you just commented:
Tesla HAS ONE of its giga factories PRODUCING batteries !
GM on the other hand HAS plants they NEED to convert its just a matter of time.
T realize this is just a needed volume issue, for both, yet do you remember when Tesla was just getting started and all the GM fanboys here were saying, Tesla will never make it it they have never manufactured a vehicle before and its harder than they think . Do you feel the exact same way about GM with the building of a huge battery factory as Tesla IS DOING it and GM will be just getting started ?
Like I said, I hope it all works out, and all the promises of GM FINALLY come true !
Yet to date, GM still has a HORRIBLE track record of ANY promise coming true !
One more thing I do not quit get here.
Look, if you are a GM investor, you just let Mary and her team spend your money on Honda and Nikola stock !
Why ? You could just buy those stocks yourself !
And if you would have, you would make more than owning GM stock !
Well who knows, but we will see, yet it is like buying Berkshire Hathaway, do you think Mary and her team are like Buffet and his ?
Yes theflew, yet look at what you wrote.
Tesla HAS one of its giga factories that PRODUCES batteries, yet GM on the other hand HAS to convert one of theirs.
You don’t think if Tesla needed more capacity they would also, like you said of GM, convert as needed ?
We are still talking, those who ARE doing, and those who some think WILL BE ABLE to do!
And please explain what you wrote.
Tesla has one factory that produces batteries and that plant is owned by Panasonic yet Panasonic leases the space from a plant they own from Tesla.
Now that their is true money making if what you wrote is true. Panasonic would be paying Tesla for a plant Panasonic owns, Ha, Ha.
I think I know what you mean, yet not sure, and how and why is this different than the GM/Honda/Nikola/LG dealings ? Are they GM plants ? or are the plants owned 50-50 with LG ? or now 25-25-25-25 with all the players ?
Do you know ?
Does anyone ?
Well I am sure someone does !
Yet we are still talking those who are DOING !
And those who are STILL making promises for the years to come !
GM’s best line is ———
—————— You Just Wait, It Will Be Great In A Couple Years————————-
I’m not concern trolling.. but are you right with reference to this? It seems kinda redundant and I’m concerned about you :/
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